The Anti-Establishment

The world’s pre-eminent hacktivist affinity group has waged holy cyber-war on a laundry list of Establishment brands, including PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa—rallying to the defense of their mother ship, WikiLeaks. And no matter how many neckbearded I.T. guys the feds round up, it seems the “Anons”—a border-less, leader-less, ever expanding army of techno-vigilantes, misanthropic pranksters, human-rights crusaders, and free-speech absolutists—are here to stay. In mid-July, some Anons took on the ultimate Establishment target, vowing to “kill” almighty Facebook on November 5 (Guy Fawkes Day). As their slogan warns, they are legion, they do not forgive, and they do not forget. If you mess with the little guy, expect them.

JULIAN ASSANGE

In a single 12-month period, Assange, 40, managed to humiliate the State Department; expose possible war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq; partner with, and then thoroughly annoy, both The Guardian and The New York Times; help spark a revolution in Tunisia; and make Interpol’s most-wanted list. If that’s not an anti-Establishment streak of the highest order, we’re not sure what is. Under house arrest in the English countryside appealing extradition to Sweden on sexual-misconduct charges—and awaiting the outcome of alleged intel oversharer Bradley Manning’s impending trial—he faces an uncertain future. But, with or without him, The Man and his secrets will never be the same.

NIKLAS ZENNSTRÖM AND JANUS FRIIS

When it comes to “disruptive technology,” the Swedish-Danish dream team that invented the long-distance-carrier-killer Skype and peer-to-peer music pioneer Kazaa know whereof they speak. Since selling Skype to eBay in 2005 for $3.1 billion and setting up their own venture-capital firm, Atomico, Zennström, 45, and Friis, 35, have placed bets on more than 30 start-ups with the potential to trash existing business models—from Last.fm Internet radio to Wi-Fi-network company Fon, to video-game innovator Rovio, the upstart behind Angry Birds. In other words, they wake up every day looking to eat the Establishment’s lunch—for breakfast. Watch your plates, ladies and gentlemen. Their next meal could be yours.

MICHAEL ARRINGTON

The tech-media mini-titan, 41, has been called all sorts of things in his day (“abrasive,” “abusive,” the Internet’s “biggest douche bag”), but he gives as good as he gets. In fact, rarely does a day go by that he doesn’t lob a rhetorical grenade of some sort from his bully pulpit atop TechCrunch, the tech-news clearinghouse he founded and last year sold to AOL for $25 million. (Only months after the deal, he called his new bosses “pathetic” for not pursuing a copyright claim against rival site SalesCrunch.) The title of a TechCrunch post in May, responding to criticism of Arrington’s eyebrow-raising plan to launch a V.C. fund of his own, sort of tells you everything you need to know: “The Tech Press: Screw Them All.”

RICHARD ROSENBLATT

The co-founder and C.E.O. of Demand Media’s radical approach to squeezing ad revenue out of the Web is diabolically simple: identify the topics people are searching for on Google and commission keyword-heavy content accordingly. In other words, let consumers decide what they want to read. (Articles on “How to Meet Young Men if You’re a Cougar,” apparently.) Rosenblatt recently promised across-the-board improvements after Google went on the warpath against “content farms” due to quality complaints. But his stock is still down nearly 60 percent. Maybe eHow can help?

LULZSEC

The Anonymous splinter group (an LOL-obsessed squad of mischief-makers seemingly put off by the Anons’ newfound social conscience) stole the hacker spotlight in May with a 50-day campaign of smash-and-grab raids on Sony, PBS, the C.I.A., and the Arizona Department of Public Safety, among others, before melting back into the ether. In mid-July, the group emerged from “retirement” to target Rupert Murdoch’s U.K. newspaper sites on the eve of his testimony before Parliament, replacing *The Sun’*s home page with a bogus article claiming the mogul had been found dead. “Arrest us. We dare you,” LulzSec ringleader Sabu tweeted mere minutes after pushing the paper off-line. London police promptly took up the challenge, arresting an 18-year-old Scot named Jake Davis, who they claim is the group’s loquacious spokesman, Topiary. Topiary’s popular Twitter feed has since been deleted in favor of a nod to Alan Moore’s hacktivist urtext, V for Vendetta: “You cannot arrest an idea.”